Tag Archives: gesture drawing

These drawings are from a Dr. Sketchy’s in NYC on Sunday, November 27th, 2011. Apparently I didn’t write down the model’s name, which is annoying. I think it was at the Bowery Poetry Club, which has since closed.

These are from a life drawing session at MICA on Dec. 13th, 2011. Neither of the two scheduled models showed up, so the coordinator found a nice fellow modeling next door for his friend who offered to step in and pose. He was a pretty good model too.

I’m currently doing some digital spring cleaning—sprucing up web pages, twitter accounts, and the like, and realized I hadn’t put up any sketches in bit. I’ve got a ton, so I’ll split them up into a few posts.

This first set is from a Dr. Sketchy’s DC session Alexis and I attended back on December 16th, 2012. The model was a burlesque performer named Cherie Sweetbottom who I hadn’t met before. This was the last Dr. Sketchy’s DC session at the Red Palace (a burlesque and rock bar) which was in the process of being shut down and dismantled around us while we drew. The director of the DC branch, Reverend Valentine, is a good friend of ours and was amazing as always, better than we would have been if we were given no warning our venue was shutting down. The bar’s employees, on the other hand, were obviously still in shock and were drinking their sorrows away as part of the grieving process. Thankfully the DC branch has since moved on to greener pastures.

Last month, Alexis and I rode down with Maria Bella of Gilded Lily Burlesque to the Asheville Burlesque & Sideshow Festival. Maria, while she was there, posed for the local branch of Dr. Sketchy’s.

These are the sketches I did, though I’ve obviously toyed with them in Photoshop. I’m still trying to find a “look” involving pencil sketches that will work in a flyer. The third one is me fooling around with what that might look like. I think it *kind of* works, but it’s not there yet.

You can also see the usual nightly progression I go through – abstract, cartoonesque drawings slowly progressing to an attempt at an actual likeness. None of them quite got there, but I think one or two got close. (Particularly the early sketches of the evening.)

Back in January, Alexis and I visited the Dr. Sketchy’s Boston branch who’s model that session was Persephone’s Playhouse. The theme was rope bondage which was pretty ambitious considering the number of ropes and knots that had to be tied between poses. It worked out pretty well and it looks like they run a pretty neat branch.

What is this?

Sketches is a stack of random sketches from the backs of napkins, life-drawing classes (often Dr. Sketchy's), work meetings, airport terminals, and anywhere else I happen to be. Sometimes, though not often, more labored work might make an appearance.